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The good thing about dumb people is that they make you feel so much better about yourself. It's why they were put here. Of course, they also serve as a reminder-through example-of what not to do.
My favorite idiot is Joey Randazzo, whom I met offshore without knowing his name. That I learned later from a newspaper article, complete with photos of Joey and the remains of his boat.
I'm chugging along in dense fog, holding a course parallel to an almost perfectly straight beach. To keep from drifting in, I'm following the chart's five-fathom line with my depthsounder so I'll stay at least half a mile off. There's a beach-bound swell coming in to port and the sound of surf to starboard. I'm thinking, "Only a complete schmuck could screw this up."
Right on cue, a boat comes wailing out of the mist on a course perpendicular to mine-heading right for shore. As I hail him to say he's going the wrong way, he calls back to say that it's me who's doomed. We both think we're talking to idiots. Except I make it home and he makes page four of the next day's paper.
Sometimes life is both fair...and entertaining.
Always in search of more things to prop up my fragile ego, and since I only come in contact with limited numbers of world-class bozos, I like to collect stories from others. I can't vouch for their accuracy, but who cares?
Two guys go fishing on an Illinois lake in their 14' aluminum boat. Their "bait" is a quarter stick of dynamite. They light the fuse and throw it downwind, thinking that this way the spray from the bomb won't get them wet. It doesn't. Instead they drift over the floating explosive, which blows a hole in the boat. "They intended to kill fish with the blast," says chief deputy coroner Jim Wipper, "not themselves."
Jane Brenner is having a great day. She's with her friends fishing off Virginia Beach. It's calm, the sun is hot, and since there are no fish, she's sitting on the swim platform dangling her feet in the water. "Hey Jane, what are you doing?" asks one of her friends. "This is fantastic," Jane replies. "I'm feeding dolphin some bait. They just keep coming." Later she tells the Coast Guard that, surprisingly, the first shark bite didn't hurt as much as the other six.
